This guide is intended to serve as an orientation to the records of Quaker meetings deposited at Swarthmore College Friends Historical Library and Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections.
Several of the Quaker Yearly Meetings in the United States have made arrangements with Haverford and/or Swarthmore Colleges to steward their organizational records. For researchers' convenience, the two libraries have collaborated on a joint catalog. Most yearly and monthly meetings are only housed at one location, but all Quaker meeting records are described in the TriCollege ArchivesSpace.
You can use the "Find a Meeting's Records" page to the left to find out more information about the Quaker meeting records at Haverford and Swarthmore.
The best source for historical data about Quaker meetings in North America (including information about where records are kept) remains QuakerMeetings.com, an invaluable resource created by Thomas C. Hill.
For any additional questions, please reach out to Caitlin Goodman (Swarthmore College) or Mary Crauderueff (Haverford College).
A yearly meeting is the highest administrative unit in the Society of Friends. The Yearly Meeting meets once per year to conduct business, although many yearly meetings today have programming throughout the year for their members and constituent meetings.
Yearly Meetings are composed of Monthly Meetings, which today is the basic congregational unit of the Quaker community. Most historical records (including those of genealogical interest) are created and maintained by the Monthly Meeting. There are also larger associations of Quaker Yearly Meetings (including Evangelical Friends Church International, Friends General Conference, and Friends United Meeting) but they do not hold administrative responsibility over Quaker meetings and some Yearly Meetings affiliate with more than one group.
